The Now Podcast

Shannon Snow is the COO of World of Women (WoW), one of the world’s leading mission-driven NFT brands celebrating representation, inclusion, and equity in web3 and beyond. Before WoW, Snow worked in big tech; she led U.S. Entertainment at Meta and spent more than a decade at Google building and leading teams. Although she only came on as WoW COO about a year ago, Snow was a holder of the project a...

Andre Oshea is a 3D artist, animator, and musician who initially made a name in Web3 by partnering on NFT drops with Netflix, the Academy Awards, and the Grammys. Before finding his niche on the blockchain, Oshea cut his teeth through client work with Adult Swim, Snapchat, Tidal, Vogue, John Legend, and more. His unique style, which explores themes related to futurism, spirituality, new worlds, an...

Frank DeGods (Rohun Vora) founded the highly acclaimed DeGods and y00ts NFT projects. He is also the co-founder of DeLabs. After working on movie sets in his early teens, he was inspired to study film at UCLA but dropped out to pursue his entrepreneurial dreams. He was accepted to the startup fund and program Y Combinator, where he raised $1.3 million. Soon after, he joined a coding boot camp and...

Long a mainstay in the Bitcoin community, Udi Wertheimer recently embraced the world of NFTs via Bitcoin Ordinals with Taproot Wizards. On February 1, 2023, Wertheimer announced the Taproot Wizards project to the world by orchestrating the largest block and transaction in Bitcoin’s history. Ultimately, the project achieved the absolute maximum block size of 4MB — something many previously thought...

The co-founder and managing director for FirstLight, Megan Kaspar is renowned as a champion of digital fashion. In October 2021 she became the first person to wear NFT clothing while giving a video interview and was featured in Haute Living’s Miami issue wearing a digital outfit by luxury fashion designer Fendi.  Kaspar took an early interest in crypto, investing in Bitcoin in 2011. She is no...

Sergio Silva, known in the NFT space as Sergito, is a prominent investor, collector, and thought leader who leveraged his background in traditional finance working at Goldman Sachs and Barclays into a thriving Web3 career. Hailed by the NFT community as a maximalist of Meebits NFTs and a curator of memes, Sergito currently acts as the Senior Director of Business Development at Fireblocks. As a fou...

Meltem Demirors is the Chief Strategy Officer of CoinShares — a leading full-service digital asset investment and trading group — the former co-chair of the cryptocurrency council at the World Economic Forum, and “High Priestess” of CryptoDickButts. An established veteran of digital asset investing, Meltem draws on her substantial experience to accelerate growth and acceptance of the asset class....

We’d like to give a special thank you to Atomic Form for helping bring our studio to life with their NFT displays. To learn more about Atomic Form, go to: https://atomicform.com   Dave Krugman is a photographer and writer based in New York City who has embraced the NFT community wholeheartedly as a new platform for expression and education for his fellow creatives. Following the successful re...

We’d like to give a special thank you to Atomic Form for helping bring our studio to life with their NFT displays. To learn more about Atomic Form, go to: https://atomicform.com   We’re kicking off Season 2 of the nft now podcast with Elise Swopes, a self-taught photographer and graphic designer who has used her business savvy to spin influencer marketing on Instagram into a full-fledged care...

Web3 gaming promises to be a critical driver for mainstream NFT adoption over the next few years. To put the scale into perspective, the blockchain gaming market size is expected to grow from $4.6 billion in 2022 to $65.7 billion by 2027. Many of the biggest game developers — including Square Enix and Epic Games — are already working on titles with Web3 integrations. That said, it takes years for...

For those just skimming the surface of Web3, it may seem like NFTs are mainly images — of everything from Bored Apes to colorful Chromie Squiggles. But NFTs come in many forms, including literary NFTs, which constitute one of the space's most exciting emerging use cases. Literary NFTs promise to be transformative for the careers of writers and the publishing industry.  Two of the visionary wo...

The crypto industry has changed significantly since Joseph Lubin helped found the Ethereum blockchain in 2015. Now focused on innovating as the CEO of ConsenSys, a leading Ethereum software company and the firm behind the popular MetaMask software wallet, Lubin has remained at the forefront of Web3 as the cultural shift it created continues to reorganize the creative and tech industries. Speaking...

Web3 is ushering us into a new era of marketing where Web2 tactics just won’t cut it. Brands must adopt new strategies (and technologies) to stay competitive and relevant. In December 2022, a group of trailblazers took the stage at nft now’s The Gateway to discuss the state of Web3 marketing and how to successfully grow projects amid this changing landscape. For the panel, moderator and nft now co...

In 2019, Ivan Soto-Wright established MoonPay to alleviate some of the biggest pain points of the Web3 user experience. The founder and CEO has since broadened MoonPay’s scope from crypto payment service to its current status as a fully end-to-end Web3 infrastructure. At nft now’s The Gateway 2022, Soto-Wright spoke of MoonPay’s macro-level business model in Web3 and how legacy brands can utilize...

Porsche, one of the most iconic brands in the luxury auto space, is making its move into web3. In November 2022, the company unveiled its 7,500-piece NFT collection based on the classic Porsche 911. Starting in January, collectors will be able to help shape the design of their digital token by choosing a “route” for it — selecting from Performance, Lifestyle, or Heritage options. These routes refl...

Best known as one of social media and Web3’s earliest advocates, internet mogul Gary Vaynerchuk’s track record of correctly identifying the next big thing and building a solid foundation in it goes all the way back to the dot-com bubble at the turn of the new millennium. After successfully bringing his family’s liquor store business online, he leveraged his insight to plant a stake in the emerging...

As CEO & Co-Founder of Deadfellaz, Betty has established herself as a pillar of the NFT community whilst remaining an important figure within the ecosystem of her influential PFP project. While the road to NFT success has been elusive and ambiguous for some, she has remained a staunch supporter of independent artists at a time when creative opportunities have become conditional and creator roy...

That’s a wrap for Season 1 of the nft now podcast! And while of course we’ll be back, we’re taking a pause to reflect on the dozens of influential artists, builders, and stars who have graced the mic to discuss the ups and downs of the NFT ecosystem and blockchain creative industry. In our endeavors to empower the creators of culture, we’ve traveled the world to spotlight the hearts and minds on t...

Much has changed since the nft now founding team last held a fireside chat back in December 2021 on the state of NFTs. Eight months into 2022, we’ve seen seismic changes in the NFT ecosystem as initial growth, promise, and schisms in the space contend with the reality of the bear market.  However, despite this new reality, there’s plenty to be hopeful about. The founders review some of their...

Claire Silver is a crypto artist who gives expression to her creative vision using the power of AI. Instead of creating new art by hand, Silver’s crypto art is the output of generative adversarial networks (GANs), which explore themes of “vulnerability, trauma, disability, social hierarchy, innocence, and divinity”. In doing so, her work questions “the role they will play in our transhumanist futu...

At the State of NFTs IRL event, held in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, we sat down with three of the most prominent U.S. figures in the greater NFT landscape to discuss the unstable present, with an eye toward the promising future of NFTs. Joining us is Nifty Gateway Co-Founder Duncan Cock Foster, “Mec;” a Web3 educator, MECXDAO founder and Aokiverse’s head of community, and the crypto and tattoo artist...

For longtime NBA fans, Baron Davis — affectionately known as B-Diddy during his playing career — needs no introduction. Despite retirement, Davis remained in the spotlight by launching ventures in the media and entertainment industries. Recently, Davis used his sizable platform to encourage professional athletes to invest in the NFT and Web3 ecosystems. Headlining this initiative is his “History o...

Frederic Duquette, known throughout the NFT art world as FVCKRENDER is a digital artist who has continually blurred the lines between the physical and virtual worlds through his ambitious experiential art experiences. Initially making a foray into the metaverse with 2021’s FVCKRENDERVERSE, the Canadian artist has recently doubled down on building worlds with FVCK PARK — a virtual NFT skatepark — a...

Itzel Yard, known throughout the NFT space as IX Shells, is a generative artist and creative coder based in Panama working at the intersection between computer science and art. Dreaming at Dusk — her generative art piece derived from the cryptographic key of the very first Tor onion website — sold for $2 million to PleasrDAO in May 2021, making her the highest-selling female NFT artist ever. Since...

Justin Blau — better known by his artist moniker, 3LAU — is a pioneer at the intersection of music and blockchain technology and perhaps one of the biggest proponents of music NFTs. With his Ultraviolet collection of 33 different NFTs netting him a reported $11.7 million in early 2021, 3LAU offered up a shining example of how NFTs have the power to disrupt the music industry, and has continued to...